


everybody wants to rule the world

by Damkianna



Category: Tidelands (TV 2018)
Genre: 4 Things, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Captivity, Dubious Consent, Extra Treat, F/F, Kneeling, Major Character Injury, Manipulation, Mind Control, Post-Canon, Power Imbalance, Sirens, Somnophilia, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:16:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Post-canon: four things that could have happened to Cal and Adrielle.
Relationships: Adrielle Cuthbert/Calliope "Cal" McTeer
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: Fic In A Box





	everybody wants to rule the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> Please forgive me for the lateness of this treat, kimaracretak—I can't even tell you how excited I was to see a Tidelands request, especially one that was so thoroughly my jam, and I knew I had to write you _something_ even if I couldn't quite finish it on time. :D You had so many fantastic suggestions (Adrielle winning and keeping Cal in Genoveva's cell! Somnophilia! Cal managing to win the queenship from Adrielle! And ... well, not quite apotheosis, but maybe if you squint?) that I couldn't choose, so here's a stack of them, and happy (belated) FIAB!
> 
> Title from Lorde's "Everybody Wants to Rule the World", both because it fit and because it plays over the end of the finale so canon review got it firmly stuck in my head while I was working on this.

**one.**

"They won't come."

"Be silent," Adrielle said, and did not turn.

Even with the horn broken, the shards worked on their own. She had been handed proof of that. If you had the shards and you had blood, that was enough. And she had the shards—almost all of them, now, though it had taken months to scrape together the money Stolin had not given her.

She had blood, too. She had spilled it steadily, until the sand of the beach had soaked dark with it, until the waves had foamed red against the shores of L'Attente.

Perhaps it hadn't been enough, that was all. Perhaps it mattered which shard it was, where you used the edge to cut. It didn't mean anything, that it hadn't worked yet. It didn't have to mean anything.

(It had worked for _Cal_. If she had killed anyone on the beach that day, it had been Stolin and only Stolin. One body's worth of blood, and no more. Augie had died, but not in the water; that didn't count. And still, still, they had come—)

"They won't come," Cal said again, hoarse but steady, tone venomous with satisfaction. "Not for you."

Adrielle spun on her heel, slammed her hand into the bars of the cell and smiled when Cal flinched back.

"Silence," she repeated softly, "or I will cut out your tongue."

Cal lifted her chin, gaze sharp. Adrielle had only taken one eye; Cal still had the other. "It'll be true whether I can say it or not," she murmured, "and you know it. They won't listen to your call. Never." Her mouth drew up in a mocking slant. "Our mothers love _me_. Not you."

Adrielle gritted her teeth, and refused to let the look on her face change. "I made a mistake that day on the beach," she said, leaning in closer to the bars. "I shouldn't have put out your eye. I should have cut your throat."

It _had_ been a mistake. She had wanted to punish Cal—to render her unworthy, to damage her. She had strode across the beach and gripped Cal where she knelt over Bijou before Cal could stop her, held her head by the hair and done it.

She hadn't been watching the sirens, the water. And when she'd been done, Cal limp and sobbing at her feet, when she'd looked up—they'd been gone.

She could get them back. She could. She had to.

"But you won't," Cal said, and tilted her head back to laugh. It was a harsh, grating sound; Adrielle hadn't given her water in weeks, and she looked stretched thin, strained, good eye huge in her face. "You won't kill me. You can't. Because you know I'm right. They'll come, if it's me. And if you kill me, you'll never get them back."

"Enough," Adrielle bit out, because there was no other answer.

And the worst part was, she thought, Cal knew it as well as she did.

* * *

**two.**

Adrielle was pleased.

There was no reason not to be; everything was going so well.

She had the last piece. Soon, she would have the horn, made whole again. She didn't know what to expect—even the ancient legends didn't say. Perhaps it would repair itself. Or perhaps she would have to take it to the sea. To her mothers, who would smile at her and lay their smooth white hands upon it, and give her everything she had ever wanted.

And they would do it, if she asked them to, because she also had Cal.

That was the most satisfying part of all.

It hadn't been easy.

Cal was strong. A queen, even if she had no one to rule. Adrielle had been able to see it in her from the beginning.

And perhaps she would have been safer with Cal dead. But the greater that raw power had proven, the greater the satisfaction had been in bending it to her will.

She had started slow. As if her mothers, the way they had strode from the sea and smiled at Cal, had changed her mind. Bijou had lived; Cal had saved her. But she'd been too slow for Augie.

Cal had asked the sirens to take him, his body. To honor him, laying his bones to rest in the realm that was theirs.

And they'd done it.

Infuriating. Revolting, that Cal should waste their mothers' time with such a thing.

But Adrielle had kept her disdain off her face, and had invited Cal—coolly, as if she felt her hand forced—to remain at L'Attente. To remain near the sea, near the sirens.

Cal had understood even then that Adrielle intended to make use of her. Adrielle had seen it in her face, in the narrowing of her eyes and the tilt of her chin.

But she'd thought it was only about their mothers, about Adrielle's desperation.

She hadn't understood that there were other things Adrielle would find joy in using her for.

And by the time she had understood it, it had been too late. Adrielle had already done it a hundred times, a thousand: pressing her will upon Cal a bit at a time, winning each tiny battle before Cal had even perceived that there was a war. Adrielle had chipped away at her resistance—because Cal was strong, but she didn't know how to use that strength, couldn't feel what Adrielle was doing to her.

It had begun with things Cal already wanted, needed. Adrielle had given her water when she was thirsty, food when she was hungry; had urged her, with the gentlest glancing pressure, to take it. It had been only reasonable for Cal to agree. Then—rest when she was tired, though she didn't want it, didn't trust Adrielle to leave her to it. Small favors, little errands. To sit, when she would rather have stood. To be quiet, when she would rather have spoken. To hold still.

And then, at last, to let Adrielle touch her.

And by the time Adrielle had had her on her back on the beach, with Adrielle's hand between her legs—it hadn't mattered how strong she was. She couldn't have pushed back even if she'd known how to do it, not with all the ground she'd already given, all the doors she'd already opened.

She was Adrielle's, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She was in Adrielle's bed tonight—she was in Adrielle's bed every night.

She roused, a little, when Adrielle came in: half asleep, disoriented, dark eyes large in her face.

"Shh," Adrielle said to her sweetly, and reached out, smoothed a gentle hand over her hair. Her hair, her cheek. Her mouth, thumb pressing in, tugging at her lower lip; and Adrielle pushed, just a little, as she did it.

Cal's eyes fell half-shut again. She hardly resisted at all. She was used to it, now.

"Adrielle," she said, faint, slurred.

"Yes," Adrielle murmured. "It's me."

With her other hand she reached back to slide her fingers into Cal's hair—closed them, gripped steadily and pulled, and Cal's head tipped helplessly back, the line of her throat exposed. Adrielle took the thumb she'd pressed into Cal's mouth and drew it down that line, and Cal's breath caught, her body starting to tense.

"Shh, shh," Adrielle said again, and pushed a little harder.

The tension melted away. Cal went slack under her hands, open, unresisting. Her eyes glazed over, and then closed entirely.

Oh, yes. Perfect. That was perfect, Adrielle thought, with a shiver of sweet delight, and pushed her the rest of the way under.

Cal slumped against her, breath deep and even. Asleep: held there with the quietest effort of Adrielle's will, so she wouldn't—couldn't—wake.

She was wearing a loose plain shirt, tight soft shorts. Nothing else, not even underwear.

Marvelous.

Adrielle released her, let her slide back down onto the surface of the bed, unmoving. Just touched her, first, running a hand up and down the outside of her bare thigh with quiet satisfaction. All the trouble it had taken to get this far was almost worth it, for this. For the sheer smug pleasure of having won, of being able to afford to indulge in reaping the rewards of that victory.

Then she closed her hands around both Cal's thighs, just above the knee, and parted them. Slid her fingers, slow, up the insides of them instead, higher and higher; toyed for an idle moment with the edges of the shorts, and then followed the seams with her fingertips and rubbed Cal lightly through the cloth.

There was a time when Cal would have hated this. Would have been furious, horrified, to be touched this way by Adrielle—would have glared at her, eyes hard, jaw set, and shoved her hands away. Would have tried to shove her hands away, at least. But now here she was, relaxed, open, unknowing; already starting to get wet, cloth dampening against Adrielle's fingers, as her body reacted mindlessly to the touch, the pressure.

Adrielle smiled down at her, ran a hand up her hip to her waist, traced the shape of one breast through the shirt and then touched her face. "Who knew you had such a gift for obedience," she said to Cal; and Cal shifted in her sleep as though she'd heard, a wave of goosebumps crossing her skin, hips hitching reflexively.

She only fingered Cal for a minute or two—all she was getting out of it, after all, was the amusement, the gratification, of toying with Cal when Cal couldn't prevent it, reveling in being able to do to Cal as she pleased.

Cal was soaking, jerking and shifting restlessly, a flush risen into her cheeks, by the time Adrielle grew tired of it. Then, Adrielle pulled her hand free, pushed her wet fingers into Cal's slack mouth; climbed up over Cal and then paused, tilting her head.

Mm, yes. That might work.

She had a hand in Cal's hair again, thighs parted over Cal's shoulders, when she eased up the pressure on Cal's mind—just a little at first, just enough so that Cal's breath began to quicken, her eyelashes flickering. Adrielle lowered herself down, pulled up on Cal's hair at the same time and rubbed herself against Cal's mouth; eased up a little more, impatient now, and Cal shifted, blinking dazedly.

"What—"

Adrielle pulled harder, shoved Cal's mouth against her and shivered, sighing, head falling back with the sensation of it, as Cal struggled weakly underneath her. Not a real fight; it couldn't be, these days. Just confusion, that was all it was, finding herself waking up to this.

"Come on," Adrielle murmured, coaxing, and Cal went still, shivering. That made it much easier.

At first Adrielle was doing all the work, holding Cal's head where she wanted it and rubbing off against her lips, her chin. But then Cal woke up a little more, and Adrielle was able to redirect her: push her in a new direction, until she was eating Adrielle out properly, and _oh_ , that was good.

" _Yes_ ," Adrielle said, panting, and held her down, rode her mouth harder, thighs clenching against Cal's head between them.

Yes, she thought distantly, it had all worked out better than she could ever have dreamed.

* * *

**three.**

She made it back to L'Attente before Cal did.

There were still bodies on the ground. Her people, the ones Stolin's men had shot as they fled. And of course they weren't alone; no doubt Dylan was still bleeding out where she had left him on the floor, if he wasn't dead already.

Others, alive, were huddled raggedly around the edges of the drive. Only a few were weeping. Most were only standing, staring. Expressionless. Refusing to show weakness.

Their eyes found and followed her, and the weight of them felt suffocating.

She did not show it. She walked with purpose, the briefcase still in her hand, her back straight and her chin high, her stride steady.

None of them knew about their mothers. None of them knew about Cal. And if she could only reach safety, her own territory, go to ground, then she could figure out what to do next. How to deal with Stolin's double-cross; how to make her people understand that it had happened because that was what outsiders were like, because they couldn't be trusted, and not because Adrielle herself had erred; how to prepare for Cal, how to steal their mothers' trust and attention from her, because if anyone learned it had been Cal who'd brought them—

"Adrielle."

Cal spoke quietly, evenly. But there was _force_ in her voice, the kind a queen would use to make herself heard, and everything seemed to go very still.

Adrielle shook off the pressure of it with more effort than she should have needed to do it. She had reached the top of the stairs. That was good: high ground. She turned on her heel, and bent only barely as far as she needed to in order to set the briefcase down, eyes fixed on Cal.

Bijou was standing just behind Cal and to the left. There was the faintest smear of blood left on her shirt—a bit that had begun to dry before Cal had started forcing the rest of it back inside her body. Her face reflected that preternatural calm she had, so unsettling to see behind a child's eyes.

Genoveva had looked like that sometimes, too. But at least it had suited her, her age, her wrinkled water-starved face.

Adrielle had still hated it.

And behind Cal and to the right was Augie.

Cal hadn't saved him. The siren had.

The first one out of the water—she'd looked at Cal, smiling. And then she'd looked down at Augie, back at Cal; sensing something, Cal's distress, Cal's pain.

She'd been confused by it, perfect alabaster brow furrowing. Of course she had. It was ridiculous, idiotic, to waste even an instant caring what happened to humans. But she'd touched Cal's face, the tears Cal had shed still wet there. And then she'd tilted her head and glanced at Augie again, and he'd been saved.

She hadn't touched him. She hadn't even reached for him. As if his blood, the water and salt of it, had only needed the weight of her stare to understand what she wanted from it and obey.

He'd risen from the sand, hand at his throat, stunned silent.

And Adrielle had known what that meant, heart pounding in her chest, and had turned around and started walking.

But: she'd been too slow. Here they were.

Was Cal's hair, her skin, paler than it had been? Were her eyes darker? Had their mothers touched her, embraced her, and left traces upon her? Or did it only seem that way to Adrielle, because she was so excruciatingly conscious that they had _chosen_ Cal?

Damn her. _Damn_ her. Adrielle was almost trembling with the urge to cross the drive and tear Cal's throat open with her fingernails. She couldn't bear this. How was she supposed to bear this?

The Tidelanders were looking at Cal now, instead of Adrielle.

And then, slowly, the closest handful of them to Cal began to lower themselves to their knees.

First it was only three of them. And then two more followed suit, shaky. Two more, another two, a group of six standing together around one of the dead; eight, a dozen, and after that it was only a matter of time, like a wave passing through water, like a long-awaited tide coming in.

Cal didn't move. She stood there with her chin high, damp hair still sticking to her cheeks, smudges of blood on her hands. She hadn't looked away from Adrielle.

"Adrielle," she said again, and stepped forward.

Adrielle wanted to kill her. Adrielle wanted to crucify her; Adrielle wanted to burn her alive.

But her people were on their knees for Cal—were going further, bending at the waist where they knelt, lowering their heads in reverence as Cal passed them. It didn't even matter whether they were doing it themselves, whether they could sense what had happened to her even without having seen it, or whether Cal was pushing them, making them, all of them at once; if the first, then Adrielle could rely on none of them to back her if she attempted to move against Cal now, and if the second, then the touch of the sirens had given Cal such power that she could no doubt crush Adrielle's mind with a moment's effort.

So Adrielle did nothing.

It was the most she had ever asked of herself, her will and her fury and her pride all reined in by an iron grip she could not permit to waver. She stood there and waited, unmoving.

She would not offer Cal surrender. Cal would demand it, and when she did, she would get it. But at least Adrielle would not have handed it to her.

Cal was smiling by the time she reached the base of the stairs. Just a little, mouth warm and slanting, eyes bright.

She climbed the steps one at a time. There weren't that many of them.

And then she stopped, beside Adrielle—facing the doors, where Adrielle was facing the drive, and the two of them locking eyes across the line of their shoulders, almost close enough to touch.

"Go on," Cal said, mild.

Adrielle gritted her teeth, drew a long slow breath through her nose and didn't move.

And then it happened. Cal tilted her head a little, and her eyes abruptly seemed very large and dark in her face. Adrielle couldn't have looked away from them if she'd wanted to. And Cal said, "Go on. Kneel," in the softest sweetest voice Adrielle had ever heard, and Adrielle swayed, legs weak, head fuzzy— _wanting_ to, wanting it more than anything.

She pushed back as hard as she could, and bought herself about four seconds. Four seconds, to soothe herself; to remind herself this had to be the plan. Fight it, yes, and then give in: increase the likelihood that Cal would keep her, would want to gloat and enjoy it, instead of killing her right here. Deliberate. Her decision, not Cal's.

Except that she was fighting it reflexively, straining for a moment of strange blind terror with everything she was, all her years of experience—and it was impossible to fail to buckle anyway, because Cal could make her after all.

Adrielle heard herself let out a shuddering sigh, and her knees bent. Her dress pooled beneath them as they came down against the veranda, one and then the other.

This had to happen. If she was going to appease Cal, if she was going to survive long enough to make Cal pay for this later—this had to happen.

But it shouldn't have been easy. It shouldn't have felt _good_. It shouldn't have filled her with such uncomplicated joy, such peace, to know that she was doing as Cal wished her to do, that she was pleasing Cal by it.

She hadn't been able to take her eyes off Cal. She was looking up, now, and Cal down.

And Cal reached out and touched her cheek, almost gently, and smiled down at her, and said, "Good."

* * *

**four.**

The siren stood at the edge of the water, waves lapping against her heels, and held out her hands.

To Cal.

And then Cal stood, too, and stepped away from Bijou, crossed the sand with slow shaky steps.

The siren held out her hands, and Cal swallowed and took them. And then the siren began to speak—a murmur like water rippling, nothing Adrielle could understand from so far away, but the sound of her voice alone made Adrielle's eyes fall shut.

They were real. They'd come.

For Cal, not for Adrielle. But Adrielle could fix that. If she killed Cal in front of them, if she went and brought her people here and they saw that she was queen, if she played along for time enough to win Cal to her—

The possibilities played themselves out behind her eyes, as she listened to the light sweet tones of her mother's voice. Yes. She could do this. She could still win.

She opened her eyes again. The siren was touching Cal's face, now, looking at her with dark liquid eyes. And then the siren—kissed Cal, pressed her mouth to Cal's, and it looked soft and artless, sincere: all the genuine affection their mothers had never showed the men who didn't deserve it anyway, the affection children deserved.

And then—

Adrielle opened her eyes.

(They'd been open already. Hadn't they?)

Cal was different. Cal had become one of them: pearl-white and gleaming, naked, sloe-eyed. Beautiful beyond words.

Augie was dead. He'd bled out in the sand, watching his sister become something he hated and feared and didn't know enough to respect. Good. He'd deserved that.

Bijou was dead, too, lying there in her loose shirt, the white dress beneath, blood everywhere, eyes open and staring up at the sky. Eyes that had always seen too much. It must have been her behind the rest of it—that plan to take Adrielle's necklace from her, and Gilles with the knife. Turning on her own queen. She'd deserved this.

(No. The blood had already started flowing backward. Cal had saved her, even if she hadn't quite finished healing the wound all the way. That didn't make sense—)

Cal moved without hesitation, without even looking down at their bodies. She stepped over Augie, light, half a skip, toes curling in the sand; she laughed. She was smiling.

She was smiling at Adrielle.

Their mothers had changed her, and now she was coming for Adrielle, because they knew Adrielle belonged with them, too.

Cal tilted her head, held out her hands. Adrielle let the briefcase fall. She wouldn't need it anymore anyway. She put her hands in Cal's, and Cal's skin was damp and cool, perfectly smooth, and smelled like the sea.

Cal drew Adrielle close, looking at her with siren's eyes, and kissed her. Soft, half a tease. Inviting.

And then she shifted the press of their mouths, rubbed her cheek against Adrielle's and murmured in Adrielle's ear—and the mouth of the siren moved at the same time, and Cal's voice was the voice of all of them, all their mothers at once.

 _You called us_ , Cal said, warm, pleased. _We heard you. We came. We love you. We've always loved you._

She had an arm around Adrielle's waist, a hand tangled in Adrielle's hair. There was no blood left on Adrielle's skin.

(—she'd been stabbed in the back, through the chest. Dylan had stopped it, had put her back together. But he hadn't needed all her blood to do it. It had been all over her, drying, sticky, unignorable—)

They were walking together across the sand, in perfectly matched steps. The siren was waiting for them, smiling.

_We love you. We've always loved you. You belong with us. We know that. We've been waiting for you._

Adrielle had never known such satisfaction, such joy.

They were in the water. It was warm, frothing playfully over Adrielle's bare feet. Cal was holding one of her hands, and the siren took the other, and together they walked further into the water.

(—no. Wait. She had to return to L'Attente. She had to figure out how to use this to her advantage, how to deal with Cal. The horn, its pieces. Stolin's betrayal. Her people—)

_Come with us. You're one of us. You always have been. We've missed you so much._

She waded deeper. The water was up to her waist, her chest, her throat. But she was a Tidelander, and she had no fear of drowning.

There were two sirens. Neither one of them was Cal anymore. Adrielle's head went under, even as she turned it to look back; and the last thing she saw was Cal's face, just as it had been before, tan and ordinary, through the ripple of sunlight on the water.


End file.
